TOM HARTLEY may have been a reluctant entrant to the Surrey Youth Championships but he ended up pretty pleased.

The 16-year-old RGS Guildford pupil has only been fencing for just over a year and performed beyond all expectations in the epee by becoming county champion. He was amid a field of 150 entrants and lost his first fight at the pool stage 5-4.

But Hartley, whose older brother Alex is also highly talented and took silver in a major team competition recently, won all his remaining qualifiers to earn top seeding for the elimination stage.

Reaching the final – where the winner is the first to 15 points – he made a confident start to be 12-7 up by the interval. But the contest was anyone’s at 14-13, both finalists lunging at each other to result in a double hit – scoring simultaneously – to give Hartley victory 15-14.

Now Hartley is training for the Public Schools Champion-ships later this month and his victory will perhaps encourage similarly inexperienced fencers to take their chances in serious competition.

Laurence Peplow, the RGS fencing captain, regularly represents Great Britain at international level and was the highest placed British competitor in last year’s World Cadets’ Championships.